The Spy (Isaac Bell 3)

“His scrolls?”

“The simple black on white of his calligraphy was so… so-what is the word-clear, as if to imply that color was actually unessential.”

“But Ashiyuki Utamaro made no scrolls.”

Her smile faded. “Do I misrecall?” She gave a little laugh, an uncomfortable sound that alerted Yamamoto Kenta that all was not well here. “I was only ten years old,” she said hurriedly. “But I’m certain I remember-no, I guess I’m wrong. Aren’t I the silly one. I’m terribly embarrassed. I must look like a complete ninny to you.”

“Not at all,” Yamamoto replied smoothly while glancing about surreptitiously to see who on the crowded platform was watching them. Nobody he could see. His mind was racing. Had she tried to trick him into revealing gaps in his hastily acquired knowledge of art? Or had she made a genuine mistake? Thank the gods that he had known that Ashiyuki Utamaro had presided over a large printshop and had not been the monastic sort of artist who toiled alone with a few brushes, ink, and rice paper.

She was looking about as if desperate for an excuse to break away. “I’m afraid I must go,” she said. “I’m meeting a friend.”

Yamamoto tipped his boater. But she surprised him again. Instead of immediately fleeing, she extended her long, slender cotton-gloved hand, and said, “We’ve not been introduced. I enjoyed talking with you. I am Marion Morgan.”

Yamamoto bowed, thoroughly confused by her openness. Perhaps he was paranoid. “Y

amamoto Kenta,” he said, shaking her hand. “At your service, Miss Morgan. If you ever visit the Smithsonian, please ask for me.”

“Oh, I will,” she said, and strolled away.

The puzzled Japanese spy watched Marion Morgan sail sleek as a cruiser through a billowing sea of flowered hats. Her course converged with that of a woman in a scarlet hat heaped with silk roses. Their brims angled left and right, forming an arch under which they touched cheeks.

Yamamoto felt his jaw go slack. He recognized the woman who greeted Marion Morgan as the mistress of a treacherous French Navy captain who would sell his own mother for a peek at the plans of a hydraulic gyro engine. He felt a strong urge to remove his boater and scratch his head. Was it coincidence that Marion Morgan knew Dominique Duvall? Or was the beautiful American spying for the perfidious French?

Before he could ponder further, he had to doff his boater to a beautiful lady dressed head to toe in black.

“May I offer my condolences?” he asked Dorothy Langner, whom he had met at the unveiling of the bronze tablet at the Washington Navy Yard shortly before he murdered her father.

A MASTER CARPENTER in blue-striped overalls served as Isaac Bell’s guide when he made his final inspection under the hull. They walked its length twice, up one side and down the other.

The last of the wooden shores bracing the ship had been removed, as had the poppets-the long timbers holding her bow and her stern. Where there had been a dense forest of lumber was a clear view alongside the cradle from front to back. All that remained leaning against the ship were temporary tumbler shores-heavy timbers designed to fall away as she began to slide down the flat rails, which were thickly greased with yellow tallow.

Nearly every keel block supporting the vessel had been removed. The final blocks were assembled from four triangles bolted into single wooden cubes. Carpenters disassembled them by unscrewing the bolts that held them together. As the triangles fell apart, the battleship settled harder on the cradle. Swiftly, they unbolted the bilge blocks, the last holding her, and now Michigan’s full weight came on the cradle with an audible sighing of minutely shifting plates and rivets.

“All that’s holding her now are the triggers,” the carpenter told Bell. “Yank them, and off she goes.”

“Do you see anything amiss?” the detective asked.

The carpenter stuck his thumbs in his overalls and peered around with a sharp eye. Foremen were herding workmen off the ways and out of the shed. With the hammering of the wedges finally stopped it was eerily quiet. Bell heard the tugs hooting signals on the river and the murmur of the expectant throng above him on the platform.

“Everything looks right as rain, Mr. Bell.”

“Are you sure?”

“All they’ve got to do now is bust that bottle.”

“Who is that man with the wedge ram?” Bell pointed at a man who abruptly appeared carrying a long pole over his shoulder.

“That is a mighty brave fellow getting paid extra to poke the trigger if it jams.”

“Do you know him?”

“Bill Strong. My wife’s brother’s nephew by marriage.”

A steam whistle blew a long, sonorous blast. “We ought to get out of here, Mr. Bell. There’ll be tons of junk falling off her when she moves. If it happens to brain us, folks will say she’s an unlucky ship-‘launched in blood.’ ”

They retreated toward the stairs that led up to the platform. As they parted at the juncture where the carpenter would join his mates on the riverbank and Bell would continue up to the christening, the tall detective took one last look at the ways, the cradle, and the dull red hull. At the bottom of the ways, where the rails dipped into the water, massive iron chains were heaped in horseshoe loops. Attached to the ship by drag cables, the chains would help slow her as she slid into the water.

“What is that man doing with the wheelbarrow?”